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For turkey hunters, Florida's Osceola the rarest prize

Dennis Crews runs Cracker Heritage Hunting Preserve and guides hunters trying to harvest the Osceola wild turkey. The Osceola is considered the most elusive turkey by hunters trying to achieve a “Grand Slam” by bagging the four major subspecies: Eastern, Rio Grande, Merriam's and Osceola turkeys.

Last Modified: Wednesday, November 21, 2012 at 4:02 p.m.

But he figures this much is certain: Anybody who thinks about sticking one of these leaner, stringier birds in the oven like a farm-raised Thanksgiving Butterball has squishy brains. Rave all you want about game turkeys being marketed as an organic “free-range” health food: The 64-year-old native Florida cowboy says there's only one way these wild birds can make your taste buds pop.

“You want to chop 'em up into bite-sized nuggets, dip 'em in flour and put 'em in the deep fry,” Crews says. “I don't know why turkey got to be such a big deal on Thanksgiving, anyway; I like ham a lot better.”

But there's something unique and alluring about the Florida turkey, and Crews — whose wide-brim Stetson, Sam Elliot drawl and small arsenal of firearms makes a strong case for veracity — sums it up this way: “It's on account of how hard they are to kill.”

A growing number of Americans are beginning to catch on.

There are, according to the National Wild Turkey Federation, some 2.7 million turkey hunters in the U.S. That's more than double the number from a decade ago, and it reflects a triumph of modern conservation efforts.

“Turkeys were over-hunted at the beginning of the last century. There were less than 30,000 in the 1930s,” says federation spokesman Josh Fleming, from Edgefield, S.C. “There's 7 million today, which is a tremendous success when you consider we lose 6,000 acres of habitat a day. We have to work harder and smarter.”

Four major turkey subspecies dominate rural America today, and the NWTF recognizes hunters who can shoot all four with a “Grand Slam” certificate.

The Eastern turkey, found in every state east of the Mississippi and then some, is the most prolific. There's also the Rio Grande, which ranges in Texas and points west, as well as Merriam's turkey, scattered across across the West.

But the most elusive — and, consequently, the most esteemed in the Grand Slam sweepstakes — is the Florida bird, called the Osceola. With a population of about 80,000 concentrated south of a line between Taylor and Dixie counties on the Gulf to a divide between Nassau and Duval counties on the Atlantic, the Osceola is the only turkey confined to a single state.

The beast is skittish, hawk-eyed and more lightweight than its eastern relatives, and is distinguished largely by feathers blushed with more iridescent greens and reds. Bottom line: The Osceola gobbler is arguably the most paranoid bird in America.

“From the time it hatches until the time it dies, something is always trying to eat that bird, every day,” says Fleming, who has yet to score a Grand Slam. “It's a cat-and-mouse game, and people will pay top dollar to get one, like $1,500, and that's probably getting off cheap.”

Beautiful turkeys

Sarasota financial planner Bob Clancy calls the Osceola “the most challenging turkey out there,” due in part to the toms' reluctance to respond to mating calls.

Clancy's shotgun has helped score seven Grand Slams, but he has failed to bag a single Osceola with a bow.

“Elk,” he says, “are easier to hunt with a bow than a turkey.”

Unlike Crews, Clancy says Osceolas make a decent Thanksgiving meal — as long as you keep them slathered in liquids like mushroom soup to keep the meat from drying out.

Sixteen-time Grand Slam winner Jeff Bunke of Rushford, Minn., calls Osceolas “clearly the real prize” in the American turkey hunt and, like Clancy, he doesn't mind sticking them in the oven.

“I suppose, if anything, it's maybe a little less tender than a Butterball, but I thought it tastes pretty good,” Bunke says. “But I don't think I've ever had better cooking than what Southern folks prepare, and I'm sure those fried nuggets are more than delicious.”

Just don't expect to get Osceola nuggets on short notice.

Crews, who guides hundreds of hunters through his Cracker Heritage property each year — they're after deer and boar, mostly — does his best to stay poker-faced when a visitor asks about getting a mere glimpse of an Osceola at his ranch late one afternoon.

“If you're trying to sneak up on him and you see him while he's moving, you can forget about it, he's already seen you,” Crews explains as he carves up a pork chop at the Pioneer Restaurant off sleepy Highway 17.

“Everything in the woods wants to eat it. Coyotes, bobcats. A bobcat is a turkey-eatin' machine. Hawks and 'coons go after 'em when they're young. So they're wary.

“If a turkey could smell, you'd never kill him.”

Crews has a better idea for getting a photograph of an Osceola. He directs his guests along a county road twisting through a treeless landscape gutted and scabbed by phosphate mines. Quarry mounds transform the low horizon into rolling hills.

“Well, they say there's land reclamation,” Crews says, “but it's never what it was. They leave ditches in the ground that turn into ponds, and next thing you know they're filled with gators. It's no place for a dog.”

The journey ends in the rustic outskirts of tiny Fort Meade, in the driveway of a sign that reads Hank's Taxidermy. Gary “Hank” Henry has a decent backlog of work and shows off an album photo of a 9-foot-tall Kodiak bear he just finished mounting.

Henry's trophy room is an impressive menagerie of antler racks and assorted other mammal remains. But the eye-grabbers are the turkeys, reconstituted with breathtaking workmanship.

“Your Eastern can get up to 28 pounds or so,” Henry says as he contrasts the sublime variations between subspecies. “The biggest Osceola here is 17, 18 pounds. We call 'em ‘swamp-walkers' because their legs are longer” than the Eastern's.

Henry totes the swamp-walker outside and places it on a tree limb for a portrait.

Going for gobblers

As the sun bleeds off to the west, Dennis Crews agrees to take his visitors on a spin through the outback, just for show. The best time for this is the spring, when the randy Osceola toms are out in full plumage, strutting and fluffing in an effort to seduce the hens.

Crews shares the Cracker Heritage with horses and goats and chickens and 150-plus cattle and a small museum's worth of animal skulls, teeth and tusks. He summons his 18-year-old son, Sid, to come along for the ride.

Sid has managed to shoot three swamp-walkers. The biggest had two-inch spurs and a 10.5-inch beard. (A turkey beard is a hair-like cluster of feathers sprouting from a tom's chest.)

Sid has affixed that trophy into an empty yellow shotgun shell.

“You'll never be quicker than they are,” Sid says. “You have to out-think 'em.”

Crews' hunting buggy is a four-wheel drive half-ton Dodge pickup, circa 1999, with 36-inch TSL Super Swamper radials. It hauls two rows of seats affording hunters a 10-foot vista. Four dog cages are mounted in the rear, but only a puppy will make the trip into the swamp-walkers' muddy lair today.

The high seats pitch and lurch like masts in a storm as Crews skirts pastureland and dog-fennel prairies and heads for the low-lying hammocks, where the wilderness pulls in tight and dank. He stops and explains this is typical of where the Osceola roosts, well above the water.

“A lot of other birds live in more wide-open country,” Crews says. “They can see you, but you can see them, too. But these woods are thick, and to come in here and try to outsmart that bird is really something.”

As the sky fades to lavender, Sid spots something way up yonder near an orange grove. He sights it with the scope on his .22 Magnum rifle. But the three grazing deer have been alerted to the buggy as well, and grow taut as exclamation points.

Crews explains no one is allowed to shoot from the buggy, lest the critters start bolting from mere association. The deer hold their ground as the truck moves out, headlights sketching the dark down the home stretch.

Crews lights a cigarette as he talks about the people who come from all over the nation to chase swamp-walkers at his preserve. There was one guy — he can't remember the name, a senator from Utah, “tall fellow” — who dropped in a few years back.

Crews and his son demonstrate a few tricks — a wooden box call, a slate call — essential for luring a gobbler into firing range.

The first gizmo issues authentic staccato cries when wrist-shaken; the latter emits saucy henlike clucks or purrs, depending upon how you etch the stylus on its surface.

Both are utterly useless now because mating season is a good four months off. Even during the season, a lousy technique will splash icewater onto even the most overheated avian libido.

“You get it wrong and they will get call-shy,” Crews says of a Miocene-era bird that has spent the past 20 million years of evolution dodging jaws, claws, clubs, arrows and bullets — all a long time before Thanksgiving came along.

“He'll say, ‘I ain't never seen a hen with a mouth that big before, and I ain't going nowhere near it now.' ”

<p><em>ZOLFO SPRINGS</em> - Dennis Crews has no idea how many wild turkeys forage on the 600-acre wilderness spread he calls Cracker Heritage Hunting Preserve.</p><p>But he figures this much is certain: Anybody who thinks about sticking one of these leaner, stringier birds in the oven like a farm-raised Thanksgiving Butterball has squishy brains. Rave all you want about game turkeys being marketed as an organic “free-range” health food: The 64-year-old native Florida cowboy says there's only one way these wild birds can make your taste buds pop.</p><p>“You want to chop 'em up into bite-sized nuggets, dip 'em in flour and put 'em in the deep fry,” Crews says. “I don't know why turkey got to be such a big deal on Thanksgiving, anyway; I like ham a lot better.”</p><p>But there's something unique and alluring about the Florida turkey, and Crews — whose wide-brim Stetson, Sam Elliot drawl and small arsenal of firearms makes a strong case for veracity — sums it up this way: “It's on account of how hard they are to kill.”</p><p>A growing number of Americans are beginning to catch on.</p><p>There are, according to the National Wild Turkey Federation, some 2.7 million turkey hunters in the U.S. That's more than double the number from a decade ago, and it reflects a triumph of modern conservation efforts.</p><p>“Turkeys were over-hunted at the beginning of the last century. There were less than 30,000 in the 1930s,” says federation spokesman Josh Fleming, from Edgefield, S.C. “There's 7 million today, which is a tremendous success when you consider we lose 6,000 acres of habitat a day. We have to work harder and smarter.”</p><p>Four major turkey subspecies dominate rural America today, and the NWTF recognizes hunters who can shoot all four with a “Grand Slam” certificate. </p><p>The Eastern turkey, found in every state east of the Mississippi and then some, is the most prolific. There's also the Rio Grande, which ranges in Texas and points west, as well as Merriam's turkey, scattered across across the West.</p><p>But the most elusive — and, consequently, the most esteemed in the Grand Slam sweepstakes — is the Florida bird, called the Osceola. With a population of about 80,000 concentrated south of a line between Taylor and Dixie counties on the Gulf to a divide between Nassau and Duval counties on the Atlantic, the Osceola is the only turkey confined to a single state.</p><p>The beast is skittish, hawk-eyed and more lightweight than its eastern relatives, and is distinguished largely by feathers blushed with more iridescent greens and reds. Bottom line: The Osceola gobbler is arguably the most paranoid bird in America.</p><p>“From the time it hatches until the time it dies, something is always trying to eat that bird, every day,” says Fleming, who has yet to score a Grand Slam. “It's a cat-and-mouse game, and people will pay top dollar to get one, like $1,500, and that's probably getting off cheap.”</p><p><B>Beautiful turkeys</b></p><p>Sarasota financial planner Bob Clancy calls the Osceola “the most challenging turkey out there,” due in part to the toms' reluctance to respond to mating calls.</p><p>Clancy's shotgun has helped score seven Grand Slams, but he has failed to bag a single Osceola with a bow.</p><p>“Elk,” he says, “are easier to hunt with a bow than a turkey.”</p><p>Unlike Crews, Clancy says Osceolas make a decent Thanksgiving meal — as long as you keep them slathered in liquids like mushroom soup to keep the meat from drying out.</p><p>Sixteen-time Grand Slam winner Jeff Bunke of Rushford, Minn., calls Osceolas “clearly the real prize” in the American turkey hunt and, like Clancy, he doesn't mind sticking them in the oven.</p><p>“I suppose, if anything, it's maybe a little less tender than a Butterball, but I thought it tastes pretty good,” Bunke says. “But I don't think I've ever had better cooking than what Southern folks prepare, and I'm sure those fried nuggets are more than delicious.”</p><p>Just don't expect to get Osceola nuggets on short notice.</p><p>Crews, who guides hundreds of hunters through his Cracker Heritage property each year — they're after deer and boar, mostly — does his best to stay poker-faced when a visitor asks about getting a mere glimpse of an Osceola at his ranch late one afternoon.</p><p>“If you're trying to sneak up on him and you see him while he's moving, you can forget about it, he's already seen you,” Crews explains as he carves up a pork chop at the Pioneer Restaurant off sleepy Highway 17.</p><p>“Everything in the woods wants to eat it. Coyotes, bobcats. A bobcat is a turkey-eatin' machine. Hawks and 'coons go after 'em when they're young. So they're wary.</p><p>“If a turkey could smell, you'd never kill him.”</p><p>Crews has a better idea for getting a photograph of an Osceola. He directs his guests along a county road twisting through a treeless landscape gutted and scabbed by phosphate mines. Quarry mounds transform the low horizon into rolling hills.</p><p>“Well, they say there's land reclamation,” Crews says, “but it's never what it was. They leave ditches in the ground that turn into ponds, and next thing you know they're filled with gators. It's no place for a dog.”</p><p>The journey ends in the rustic outskirts of tiny Fort Meade, in the driveway of a sign that reads Hank's Taxidermy. Gary “Hank” Henry has a decent backlog of work and shows off an album photo of a 9-foot-tall Kodiak bear he just finished mounting.</p><p>Henry's trophy room is an impressive menagerie of antler racks and assorted other mammal remains. But the eye-grabbers are the turkeys, reconstituted with breathtaking workmanship.</p><p>“Your Eastern can get up to 28 pounds or so,” Henry says as he contrasts the sublime variations between subspecies. “The biggest Osceola here is 17, 18 pounds. We call 'em 'swamp-walkers' because their legs are longer” than the Eastern's.</p><p>Henry totes the swamp-walker outside and places it on a tree limb for a portrait.</p><p><B>Going for gobblers</b></p><p>As the sun bleeds off to the west, Dennis Crews agrees to take his visitors on a spin through the outback, just for show. The best time for this is the spring, when the randy Osceola toms are out in full plumage, strutting and fluffing in an effort to seduce the hens.</p><p>Crews shares the Cracker Heritage with horses and goats and chickens and 150-plus cattle and a small museum's worth of animal skulls, teeth and tusks. He summons his 18-year-old son, Sid, to come along for the ride.</p><p>Sid has managed to shoot three swamp-walkers. The biggest had two-inch spurs and a 10.5-inch beard. (A turkey beard is a hair-like cluster of feathers sprouting from a tom's chest.)</p><p>Sid has affixed that trophy into an empty yellow shotgun shell.</p><p>“You'll never be quicker than they are,” Sid says. “You have to out-think 'em.”</p><p>Crews' hunting buggy is a four-wheel drive half-ton Dodge pickup, circa 1999, with 36-inch TSL Super Swamper radials. It hauls two rows of seats affording hunters a 10-foot vista. Four dog cages are mounted in the rear, but only a puppy will make the trip into the swamp-walkers' muddy lair today.</p><p>The high seats pitch and lurch like masts in a storm as Crews skirts pastureland and dog-fennel prairies and heads for the low-lying hammocks, where the wilderness pulls in tight and dank. He stops and explains this is typical of where the Osceola roosts, well above the water. </p><p>“A lot of other birds live in more wide-open country,” Crews says. “They can see you, but you can see them, too. But these woods are thick, and to come in here and try to outsmart that bird is really something.”</p><p>As the sky fades to lavender, Sid spots something way up yonder near an orange grove. He sights it with the scope on his .22 Magnum rifle. But the three grazing deer have been alerted to the buggy as well, and grow taut as exclamation points. </p><p>Crews explains no one is allowed to shoot from the buggy, lest the critters start bolting from mere association. The deer hold their ground as the truck moves out, headlights sketching the dark down the home stretch.</p><p>Crews lights a cigarette as he talks about the people who come from all over the nation to chase swamp-walkers at his preserve. There was one guy — he can't remember the name, a senator from Utah, “tall fellow” — who dropped in a few years back.</p><p>“Worst turkey hunter I ever saw,” Crews recalls. “He couldn't quit talking on his cellphone.”</p><p>Crews and his son demonstrate a few tricks — a wooden box call, a slate call — essential for luring a gobbler into firing range.</p><p>The first gizmo issues authentic staccato cries when wrist-shaken; the latter emits saucy henlike clucks or purrs, depending upon how you etch the stylus on its surface. </p><p>Both are utterly useless now because mating season is a good four months off. Even during the season, a lousy technique will splash icewater onto even the most overheated avian libido.</p><p>“You get it wrong and they will get call-shy,” Crews says of a Miocene-era bird that has spent the past 20 million years of evolution dodging jaws, claws, clubs, arrows and bullets — all a long time before Thanksgiving came along.</p><p>“He'll say, 'I ain't never seen a hen with a mouth that big before, and I ain't going nowhere near it now.' ”</p>